With all due respect to our respected economics scientist below (besides, he earned a Noble prize and I didn't... ;-) ), I do not concur with his theory.
BTW, I'm not even agreeing with the title of this topic!... 'Validates free-market metrication'??? I don't think so... Anyways, let me make a few comments on this below. Jim Elwell wrote: >This year's Nobel Prize in Economics went to Vernon L. Smith of George Mason University. He earned his stripes by doing experimental economics... > I've ranted on this forum about how the free market will best figure out how to convert the USA to metric (admitting that it won't happen quickly). I'm happy to report that Smith's work largely validates what us Libertarians and capitalists have been saying: let the market handle the changeover to maximize the efficiency and minimize the cost of metrication. * And I respectfully disagree (and even... slightly vehemently...). Perhaps Mr. Smith's libertarian views are having too strong an influence on his line of thinking (as is usually to be expected, personal values and beliefs DO have SIGNIFICANT influence on how we pattern our view of the world!... No detriment there, BTW, just a matter of fact) > One tidbit from the December issue of Reason magazine (www.reason.com), in the preface to an interview with Smith: "Smith's ideological odyssey has been no less wide-ranging. He started out as an avowed socialist who believed that the good society was one in which a few wise men made most social, economic and political decisions. Over the years, he gravitated toward a libertarian position that holds that individuals should be as free as possible to make their own tradeoffs. 'Whether we're talking about politics or economics, or even social interaction,' says Smith, 'the best systems maximize the freedom of the individual, subject to the constraint of others in the system.' " * No arguments here. So far so good... But I'd need to read more about this great scientist of our time to draw a conclusion/link between his work and what Jim is claiming his views really are (not that I'm disputing they are what Jim claim they are, but simply that I'd like to see that for myself, especially in light of the "history" behind how his thoughts are portrayed here to have been developed). > Interestingly, Smith did some of his economic experimentation in the hard-science field of deep space exploration craft.... Each experiment used three basic elements: energy, mass and volume. The idea was to come up with the most efficient use of these three resources. We allocated a set amount for each resource. Participants were given tokens that were essentially money that they could trade among themselves. When the bidding started, the price of mass started out very high relative to volume and energy. Then people started to conserve it, and, by the end, it collapsed. The price of mass collapsed! That was the first space mission that came in without a big cost overrun." * Experiments such as the one above misses *critical* environment parameters which MUST be taken into account, like *power* of stakeholders, socio-economic factors and infra-structure, etc. It's nice and dandy to "play" with scenarios like that, but without taking such factors into account results will always be quite suspicious to say the least... Cheers, Marcus ____________________________________________________________ Get 25MB of email storage with Lycos Mail Plus! Sign up today -- http://www.mail.lycos.com/brandPage.shtml?pageId=plus
